JOHN KRYK, QMI Agency

"Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things." -- the indefatigable Andy Dufresne in Stephen King's The Shawshank Redemption

By contrast, the worst of things -- if you're a football fan -- is the prolonged misery of watching your team come up short.

Under the same head coach. With the same starting quarterback. The same painful ways. Over multiple seasons.

There isn't a shard of hope to be found anywhere in that half-mile-long sewage pipe.

The angriest fan bases in the NFL are mired in such hopelessness. Long gone in their cities is the grace period a new head coach is afforded, or a new starting quarterback. Fans of those fresh-faced teams can rationalize the initial losses, clinging to the best of things -- hope for the future.

Not so much for fans of lousy teams with established head coaches and quarterbacks.

One way to identify those in the Hopelessness Club is by going back exactly one year and figuring out which NFL teams do not